Director, HR Business Partner - Client Services, Engineering and Operations
HybridMilano, Umbria, Italian Republic
Milano, Umbria, Italian RepublicHybridFull TimeSenior LevelMedium
Full TimeSenior LevelMedium
Job Summary
Act as the senior People & Culture partner to the Chief Operating Officer and Client Service, Engineering and Operations Leadership Team, providing commercially focused advice on organisational and people matters. Build a detailed understanding of the function's operating model, workforce profile, and operational risks to translate priorities into practical people plans covering workforce capacity, headcount forecasts, and critical skills. Advise on organisational design, spans of control, and reporting lines while coaching senior leaders on decision-making, accountability, and engagement. Identify high-potential employees for succession planning, support performance processes, and partner with local HR Operations, Legal, Talent Acquisition, Reward, and Learning teams to manage employee relations, define hiring priorities, and address capability gaps. Work closely with Operations leaders across EMEA markets to ensure decisions are fair, consistent, and aligned with STACK's values, balancing business performance with employee engagement in a fast-paced infrastructure environment.
Required Qualifications
- Director level HR Business Partner
- Support Client Services, Engineering and Operations Function
- EMEA region
- Based in Italy
- Fluent Italian
- Fluent English
- Commercially minded
- Engaging and collaborative
- Comfortable operating in a business where not everything is fully defined
- Ability to combine sound judgement with practical execution
- Significant experience as a senior HR Business Partner, People Partner or HR leader supporting an Operations, Engineering, Infrastructure or similarly technical function
- Proven record of partnering at executive or leadership-team level
- Experience working in complex, multi-site and multi-country organisations
- Strong understanding of site-based employees, technical specialists, engineering teams, shift populations and operational leadership structures
- Strong organisational-design experience
- Experience leading workforce and succession planning
- Experience coaching senior leaders
- Experience partnering effectively with specialist teams including Talent Acquisition, Reward, Learning and Development, HR Operations, People Analytics and Legal
- Strong understanding of Italian employment practices and employee-relations requirements
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly to STACK offices and data centre locations across EMEA
- Fluent spoken and written Italian and English
- Comfortable moving between long term organisational priorities and immediate operational challenges
- Ability to act as a trusted adviser to senior leaders
- Independence and judgement required to challenge constructively
- Ability to manage people-related risk
- Ability to ensure decisions are fair, consistent and aligned with STACK's values
- Ability to build trusted relationships without becoming overly dependent on consensus
- Ability to listen carefully, challenge respectfully and help leaders make balanced decisions
- Ability to identify emerging people risks, workforce concerns and employee-relations trends
- Ability to recommend targeted action
- Ability to ensure site-based and shift-based employees can access development opportunities, HR support and wider company initiatives
- Ability to define hiring priorities
- Ability to improve workforce forecasting
- Ability to ensure recruitment reflects the skills and capabilities required by the business
- Ability to define job architecture
- Ability to evaluate roles
- Ability to manage compensation
- Ability to manage retention arrangements
- Ability to identify technical, leadership and behavioural capability gaps
- Ability to implement solutions aligned with operational priorities
- Ability to maintain accurate employee data
- Ability to maintain organisational structures
- Ability to maintain workforce reporting
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, high-growth and investor-backed environment
- Ability to build trusted partnerships
- Ability to create organisational clarity
- Ability to deliver consistently without losing sight of the employee experience
- Ability to be visible, spending time with operational teams and building credibility through a strong understanding of the business
- Ability to communicate confidently and credibly with employees and senior stakeholders in both languages
- Ability to take personal ownership for delivering outcomes
- Ability to take time to understand the work, workforce and commercial context before recommending a solution
- Ability to focus on business need, customer outcomes and employee impact rather than defaulting to an HR process
- Ability to bring independent judgement and the confidence to challenge constructively
- Ability to question organisational complexity, unclear accountability or a decision that isn't backed by a clear business need
- Ability to build trusted relationships and maintain confidentiality and sound professional judgement
- Ability to bring calm authority and be confident and decisive in complex situations
- Ability to lead with fairness, respect and humility
- Ability to be approachable, with the credibility to engage employees and leaders at every level in data centres and operational environments
- Ability to move comfortably between strategic workforce priorities and immediate employee matters
- Ability to take ownership, create structure and help the business move forward without waiting for perfect conditions
- Ability to be commercially credible
- Ability to balance employee considerations with operational requirements, affordability, risk and investor expectations
- Ability to be collaborative and low ego
- Ability to work effectively across People & Culture, Finance, Legal, functional leadership and local teams
- Ability to use data and evidence to inform decisions, identify risks and measure the impact of people interventions
Desired Qualifications
- Experience across additional European jurisdictions
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